Hi everyone. My son is in 5th grade and we’ve applied to a few primary schools (k-9) as well as to some 6-12 schools. One of the 6-12 schools have offered him a full ride, but it’s a 2nd tier school and my hope is for him to go to Deerfield Academy when he’s in 9th grade. My question is, if he doesn’t get as good a financial aid package in the primary schools, would it be shady to go the the 2nd tier 6-12 on the full ride and then apply to Deerfield when he’s in 8th grade?
If you want to consider DA for 9-12 from a 6-12 school, there’s nothing wrong with that. You may find you are happier with your current school than you thought you would be. During these 3 years, your child will reveal more about what they want those 4 high school years to look like. It might not be either your current school or DA!
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I love your perspective. Thanks!
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Many kids change schools at 9th grade. There is nothing unusual, and certainly nothing shady, about that.
And I agree with @gardenstategal - your child is very young, you and he may have different ideas about highschool once you get closer to it.
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I would echo this and also add somewhat of a counterpoint: schools can be sticky. This is less about being “happier with your current school than you thought you would be” and more about inertia. Kids make friends, get used to routines, etc. They may become intransigent about leaving after 8th grade. It’s one of the reasons why, once we decided to pull our kids from local public and move them to local private, we chose a school that had a hard stop after 9th grade. No sticking around for us at that point.
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Fully agree with @DroidsLookingFor on the stickiness. We deliberately stayed at our LPS through 8th for fear of getting "stuck ". But realistically, I don’t think we would have stayed anywhere we weren’t happy or if there had been a seriously better option. But we may not have tried to optimize around the edges either.
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So you don’t think that it might look like I took advantage of the school’s financial aid in order to get my son the resources he needed to get to a better school? Also, would the teachers and head master at the 6-12 be OK with writing recommendation letters for my son to go to another school? Would the letters be good letters? I’m just terrified that sending him to a 6-12 prep might backfire.
This is very true, although DS very much prioritizes his academic life over his social life. At his current School, he has a ton of friends and he’s very well liked by everyone, but he pretty much begged me to switch him to a school where kids had the same level of intellectual curiosity as he had and where he could take more challenging classes. I’m not saying puberty is not going to change that, though! Lol
Did you feel like his LPS prepared him well for Private Upper School? That’s my fear. DS’ school district has something called “inclusion”, where they place the kids with special needs (with behavioral, physical and cognitive disabilities) in the same classroom as everyone else. As much as I love the idea of including everyone and having kids exposed to a variety of different people, I’ve noticed that the teachers are forced to advance at a slower pace because they either have to constantly stop the class to help a child who is having a behavioral episode, or they have to repeat the same material over and over again because not all the kids are getting what they are being taught.
Yes, most likely they will write recommendations that are true. Lots of kids apply out for high school. Going to BS is a totally different experience, not as if you are trading one private day for another down the road. Why are you set on deerfield now though? If he is happy at the local private what would the reason to change be? It just isn’t shady and it’s done all the time.
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That’s good to hear. I don’t really want him to go to DA, he does. He visited the campus and fell in love with it. He also read the curriculum and liked the classes a lot more than the ones offered by the upper school of the school he got accepted at for sixth grade. I’m sure he’s bound to change his mind about DA as time goes by. He just doesn’t think the school where he got accepted has enough classes in the upper school and he would like to explore with a lot of subjects before college.
@ritsuko Agree with the good advice you’ve been given above.
Regarding your DS falling in love with Deerfield. I would just reframe things for you parent-to-parent and say it sounds like he fell in love with boarding school in general. Lots (most?) boarding prep schools will have that kind of course catalog. So just to keep in the back of your mind that boarding school (to your kid: “Deerfield” but to you “boarding school in general”) sounds awesome, and it will be a fun project in the future to investigate the options and determine which boarding schools are the best fit for him then.
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Agree with the above. As is often pointed out these schools are more similar than different even though they do each have their own vibe. It is not the different between say Harvard and the worst college in the country and sometimes it seems like that’s how people stress about it. Like Andover vs (I’m trying to come up with a little known school!) Lawrence Academy. You will be well educated at both.
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Not at all! You’re caring for your son and doing what you need to afford what you think is the best education for him. You’re using a service the school is providing, so I don’t think you and your son should feel obligated to stay there if you feel BS is a better option and you have better opportunities. I will suggest that if your son doesn’t make it to BS/isn’t interested, it sounds like the ability to continue to 12th at the 6-12 is a good fallback.
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